Crime in London fell during the Olympics, suggesting that the Games did result
in a feel-good factor.

Despite many more wealthy tourists coming to the capital and police being diverted into protecting sports venues, provisional figures suggest that overall crime rates were 6 per cent lower compared with last summer.

Special courts were set up for Games-related lawbreakers such as ticket touts and sellers of black-market merchandise but they had only a handful of cases to deal with.

Only nine people were arrested at London 2012 venues, although there were five incidents of Armed Forces personnel suffering abuse or physical attacks elsewhere in the city.

Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, told MPs yesterday: “Our initial assessment is that during that period crime was reduced by something like the order of 6 per cent despite the fact that we had a lot more people travelling into London.” Scotland Yard said precise figures were still being calculated for the three months covering the Olympics and Paralympics, while exact comparisons with 2011 may be difficult because of the riots.

The Commissioner also told the home affairs select committee that his officers were happy to step into the breach and provide security for the Games, along with the Army, when the private contractor G4S disclosed at the last minute that it could only deliver 7,800 trained guards out of the 10,400 agreed.

The hearing was told that on some days there was a 35 per cent shortfall in the number of G4S security guards on duty, but on others it was 4 per cent.

It is not known yet what the cost will be of policing the Olympics, particularly as many officers will have to be paid overtime after being told to cancel summer holidays.

G4S has been paid £90 million so far after agreeing more than £230 million in contracts before the Games, but will lose £50 million over the fiasco and is giving £2.5 million to Armed Forces charities. Its chief executive, Nick Buckles, told MPs: “I’m not going to say we did a great job. But we delivered a significant portion of that contract and our people did an excellent job and played a major part in delivering these Games. We are planning to take a £50 million loss on this contract.”

Government officials insisted that they had no idea of G4S’s problems until a few weeks before the opening ceremony, although confidential reports compiled by the police watchdog had raised concerns months earlier.

In a rare public appearance, a senior security figure at the Home Office told the committee that information supplied by the company was “clearly misleading at the very least”.

Charles Farr, who was the chairman of the Olympic Security Board, said: “They weren’t completely open about the nature of the problems they were having.

“We were disappointed that an otherwise outstanding performance on safety and security was somewhat marred by their failure to deliver.”